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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7221482" data-attributes="member: 79141">Reflections and PlansI’m very pleased with the way the last session went.  It was intended as our ‘finale’ before the long summer break, but worked even better as a post-break opener: non-stop action that everyone could buy into because it picked up just where we left off.  Players only had to look at their character sheets to see how beaten up they were before the fight started; finding themselves split across two separate battlefields meant this was going to be even more tough than usual.Because the party had both Vitus Sigismund and Lydia Hatsfield in support (I statted her up with some basic spells and buffs) – and knowing Macbannin would show up just as things were looking bleak – I ran two encounters at once: both the ‘Showdown’ encounter and the ‘Exit Blocked’ encounter (that was made possible by virtue of the manner of their descent – leaving wormholes open behind them).  To be honest, I had no idea how this would turn out and got a bit worried I had overdone it at one point. But it worked and, most importantly, the key moments of drama worked too – especially when Macbannin sacrificed himself to take out Vicemi:I statted Macbannin up as a playable NPC and, once he had arrived, gave him to a player to run.  The self-sacrifice power was writ large, and in the Cypher System you can wipe yourself out by recklessly blowing through your powers, not only by getting hit, so it wasn’t necessary to rely upon pure chance.  What I couldn’t have anticipated was that Uru would land the death-blow on Vicemi just as Macbannin reached 0 in all of his pools – the trigger for his final curse.Another lovely moment came when the players found themselves trapped by the ironclads.  They thought I was setting things up for next week (we were so close to the end of the session) and began to discuss how screwed they would be.  It was nice to be able to pay off all of Uru’s fantastic roleplaying (in the guise of Gran Guiscard) when he took the sea shanty of the ghost pirates and sung it at the convocation.  He rolled a bunch of 20s then and this was his reward: the ghost ship engaged one ironclad and saved their bacon.Next week (and probably the week after) we’ll be running Bonds of Forced Faith as a ‘buffer’ between Schism and Diaspora, but also as a kind of prologue to the latter.  Instead of running it in the middle of the adventure – and really disrupting the narrative flow – I thought it would be fun to run it now, especially while Amielle Latimer is fresh in their memories.  Another fun fact is that Roland Stanfield will be run by Malthusius’ player – who already knows he is a traitor.  Better yet there is seventh pregenerated NPC: the very skyseer who had the vision Amielle has come to share with them.  His name is Malthus, and he is one of Malthusius’ previous incarnations! This foreshadows the arrival of Uriel, Malthusius’ latest reincarnation, who will join the unit shortly (when the ‘wind woman comes,’ as predicted when he last spoke to Korrigan). In our campaign, Diaspora won’t just be a search for Kasvarina’s memories, but also for Uriel’s as he tries to relive memories from all of his twelve past lives. If he succeeds, he will gain access to all of their memories and ‘know’ his friends once again.  He will also remember that Roland Stanfield is a traitor.  That’s my big change to Diaspora.PS.  RangerWickett – who is ‘the Primo’, mentioned in meanwhile in the news at the start of Diaspora?  Sorry if I’m being thick, but I can’t work it out or link it to anything later in the campaign.</blockquote>

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